• In Australia and New Zealand as elsewhere in the world the enormity of loss of life and limb during the Great War sparked an interest in some sort of club or association for the men who returned. These were to have the dual role of providing a vehicle to assist the families of the slain and the wounded who would never recover fully as well as providing a forum for the men to share their memories with others who understood. Many, even most, felt that they could not talk of the horrors with people who had not been there.

• My father wrote in his trench diary that "1 of them threw one bomb in a Lewis Gun Position and killed Marshall the No.1. There was a lot of casualties from the strafing. Poor old Sgt Bishop our India rubber man got his lot that night.  It a sight to go round the lines next morning and see the dead lying about careless, some without heads and others laying in several pieces. And the wounded coming down on the stretchers groaning and not cheerful. No doubt this is a serious business this War. No wonder chaps get shell shock".

• He also wrote, in a different section, "McKay and Littleboy are missing. They must have got skittled. Poor old Freddie Kingston of Hughenden got his lot last night. They are shovelling men up this morning and burying them in sandbags. 

• That is hardly the stuff of polite dinner table talk so the boys would gather in groups and have a few drinks, yarn about anything and everything and from that grew the desire for a formal arrangement. In Australia it was called the RSSILA, later the RSSAILA and later still the RSL. In New Zealand it was called the RSA.

• As well and slightly later an organisation came into being that is unique to Australia. It is called Legacy and it's story is also told here on a page of it's own.